Implementing a Video Self-Reflection Course for Online Teachers

Dr David Bish presented on 'Implementing a Video Self-Reflection Course for Online Teachers' at the 7th online Future of English Language Teaching Conference.

See the video recording below:

Abstract

This is the story of the first of many successful video self-reflection courses where our language instructors have the chance to make three structured, guided observations of their own lessons. The course is run without trainer intervention but still offers a heavily personalised learning experience to the teacher.

Our goal was to move observation from something associated with assessment to something that would appeal to individual teachers’ drive to improve the quality of their teaching and their own satisfaction with the classes they teach. The advantage to any observation of online teaching is that we automatically record all lessons for quality assurance purposes allowing for unobtrusive ‘observations’ to happen after the class. We wanted to offer some of these recordings for our instructors to observe in a secure, private way.

We ran a pilot course in 2021, based on ideas from the Best Foot Forward project developed by the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University, but the tools we offered teachers at the time made for a complicated course that relied heavily on the input and advice of mentors. This year, we enhanced our existing video observations with a timeline tagging tool and custom rubrics for each lesson type (private, group, exam practice etc.). These tools gave us an ideal format to structure self-reflection. We combined this with an LMS-based course to enable the instructors to set their own goals and select strategies to develop their skills before watching again to see how they were doing.

We finish our story by sharing the clear measures of success of this course and how we aim to build on this in the future to allow our instructors to drive their own professional development agenda and build the community of practice in our teachers.

About the presenter

Dr David Bish is the Academic Lead at EF Teach Online.